This weekend a pump went out on our fish tank so we made a (well, three, but we’ll get to that later) trip to the fish store. With the first trip, I was sold a pump that we didn’t think would work. The pump we needed was a vacuum pump that takes the air out of the siphon overflow for the filter. The pump we were sold was a submersible pump that most people use in their sump to move water. We couldn’t figure out how it would work because the attached hose contained a cap to sit outside the tank to pull in air. (more…)

We have new pets! We received a free ~40 gallon salt water tank from Mat’s work, and have it setup with only a couple fish right now. The tank was in bad shape when we got it because it was not kept up at work. The algae was so bad that you could not see through the glass inside. There were two yellow-tailed blue damsels still alive, but lots of other fish that had been in it were dead and gone. We cleaned the tank, put in new water and let it run, with the damsels in a bucket. The damsels are doing fine and we have also purchased an orange spotted shrimpgobie and a couple crabs. The gobie and crabs have taken care of any remaining algae, although there is still a lot of debris in the water. We’re going to try sheets of filter medium on the siphon that goes to the sump. Hopefully this will keep the water a little more clean!